Romanticism of the Classics, but as far as the earlier stage is concerned, it exists altogether beyond doubt. In Goethe it is undeniable and undenied-in fact, if we had not the second part of Faust to prove his real faith by almost his latest work, we might take him for a renegade and a lapsed one altogether, as he certainly was a blasphemer occasionally. In Scott the mixture is more a question of streaks he is sometimes almost pure eighteenth century. The same is the case with Wordsworth, who indeed, as Mr Vaughan has justly pointed out, is a sort of Romantic free-lance, and in some ways not a Romantic at all. As for Byron, his rather blatant Classicism was most certainly not mere pose, but genuine conviction; while his Romanticism is mainly of the cloak-andsword and local-colour kind, not the pure Romance of The Ancient Mariner or Proud Maisie. Shelley, here as elsewhere, stands alone. That his inspiration was notoriously classical, not mediaval, is quite indecisive. But it is not mere paradox or mere galimatias to say that his poetry is rather Romantic because it is the essence of poetry, and so contains all possible poetic qualities in perfection, than because it has the special Romantic differences in a highly developed degree. It is Romantic as Eschylus and Sappho are Romantic. No doubt this is to be so

in the best sense of the term, but it is hardly to be so in the fullest, or the most characteristic.

Still in all these, and in others,1 an advance is made

1 The thesis could be worked out in striking examples from Schiller to Lamartine.

much greater than the retrogression-if such it is to be termed. This advance is on different lines-lines which, indefinitely in length but definitely in scope, converge towards the inaccessible but ever-tempting goal of Romance. There is besides the great compassgiven line of imagination, the line of vagueness, the line of personality, the line of recourse to the mediæval-others too many to label. But the most important, perhaps, to poetry and in poetry is a double line-the line of increased and combined appeal to eye and ear. This has continued to the present day, and is dealt with in the earlier part of this Conclusion and also in the body of the present volume. But it is in the period of the Romantic Triumph that it first makes a definite and distinct appearance.

The still later and latest phases have been touched in the earlier part of this Conclusion, of which the latest of them form the actual subject, and it would be inartistic as well as tautologous to rediscuss them here. It is enough to say that German, which led the movement, ceased first to contribute to it importantly; that English after some ninety, and French after at least seventy, years of production, almost incredible in volume, variety, and vigour, have for some two decades been distinctly less distinguished; and that the younger or young-old literatures, however interesting and fertile, have scarcely yet developed either kinds of practice, or individual practitioners, on a level with the great older kinds from the Greek epic and tragedy to the English drama and novel, or with the great writers from Homer downwards. On the other hand,

no literary movement has ever worked itself out with more fulness or under more favourable conditions than the Romantic, which, as we have endeavoured to show, is not in one sense 'worked out" even yet. And certainly no century has ever contributed a quota of literature more lavish in volume, more instinct with power, more free from monotony and limitation, or more abounding in delight.

Nothing, therefore, is here for complaint or dissatisfaction, even if it be impossible to pronounce the opening of the twentieth century one of the palmy times of European literature. But the lesson of the whole history is, in a sober and philosophic fashion, quite as cheering. Those who study it with the faculty of learning will draw from it as little of the hot-headed delusion called belief in progress as of the cold fit of despair, which holds that everything ruit in pejus. They will probably-though this is very much a matter of taste and temperament -draw from it a very profound disbelief in any easily calculable ratio of connection between national and literary idiosyncrasy, between political and literary events, between criticism and creation, between a dozen other pairs of causes and effects which the "philosophic" writer loves to couple together, however hard they strain at the leash. They will perhaps come to the conclusion that while much mediate and average calculation is possible, while nothing is more unwise than to "like grossly" and to neglect the examination of the causes of pleasure, the wind of the

spirit blows where it lists, and mocks all attempts to foretell the times and the seasons of its blowing or to discover the causes why it has blown. But they may, and it is hoped they will, find in the history of the actual accomplishment-in the wind-chart of the past-not a little that must instruct them, and perhaps something that they may enjoy.